Our earlier invention of the same title, to be issued on Nov. 16, 1993 as U.S. Pat. No. 5,261,176 from copending application filed Jan. 21, 1992 with Ser. No. 07/823,175, related to different tag structures suited to be removably secured to a container handle for providing visual identification under a preconceived code of the contents or beverage held within the container. These tag structures or system can be used in restaurants, cafeterias, or other food eating establishments to convey specific refill information to the server, even if the different possible beverages cannot be distinguished visually, and without any verbal communication from the customer.
The patented tag system utilized groups of separate tags, where all tags within any group were visually the same and where the tags of each group were visually distinct. Shapes, colors and/or markings of the tags provide for group distinctness. The container on which the tag system will be used is commonly a drinking cup or mug, where the handle is comprised as a closed loop defining a finger opening and having a cross-section comfortable for the finger gripping.
Each tag had an elongated narrow body shaped somewhat uniformly over substantially a full 360 degrees to separate end edges, defining a split ring enclosed tag opening, where each unflexed tag lies in a plane and presented its end edges aligned opposite but closely adjacent one another with a gap therebetween. The tag bodies are formed of a degradable paper, thin in the direction axially of the tag opening but yet providing sufficient stiffness and shape memory to hold any tag in and return it generally to its unflexed configuration, while yet offering sufficient resiliency to be flexed laterally to increase the gap and fit the tag onto or remove it from the container handle. The gap of the unflexed tag is smaller than the handle cross section, for trapping the tag on the container handle.
One drawback to this tag construction has been the compromise of selecting a singular tag size able to work with many different containers, be they drinking cups, mugs or pitchers, in order to hold down the inventory of different tags needed, while yet providing a viable identification system. Each split ring tag thus had an overall outer dimension and a smaller inner dimension sized to fit over a selected handle cross section, while allowing the tag when unflexed to return to the generally planar configuration with the end edges aligned and opposite one another. The same sized tag when fitted on any significantly smaller handle will dangle loosely.
It has been determined that a preferred tag-handle fit is somewhat snug, to provide that the tag when positioned initially on the handle will not shift freely along the handle while the person is holding the cup or mug and drinking from it.